Whenever I reach the end of a festival like this, I look back and wonder what I was thinking when I made my choices of what to see. I seemed to see a lot of obscure films, and I can't help but wonder if I would have enjoyed myself more if I'd just gone to see Werner Herzog, George Romero and Morgan Spurlock. Over the course of MIFF I saw thirteen feature documentaries and two shorts nights. Of the features 2 were Australian, 3 were American, 1 was Canadian, 1 was British, 1 was French, 1 Slovakian, 1 German, 2 Israeli and 1 Iranian. I'm pleased to say the Australian ones held up very well.
The strongest films I saw were To See If I'm Smiling, My Winnipeg and Rock N Roll Nerd. They differed substantially in style and subject matter, with the common thread being that in all three cases the film-maker had a strong personal connection to their subject matter.
The weakest were, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the American and British films, where the influence of YouTube and Reality TV culture was in evidence, with a home video style aesthetic and at times a disregard for manipulation of the subject matter. Of course, this may simply reflect my choice of which films to see, but it is interesting that I saw more films from the USA than anywhere else and the difference in aesthetic to other countries was marked.
In terms of story, few films could compare to the raw power of the tales coming out of the Middle East. If only more dialogue about the Middle East was as well thought out and incisive as the films on display at the festival. The surprise let-down, for me, was Terror's Advocate, which on the strength of its content should have been interesting but somehow struggled to keep my attention.
Where films didn't work for me, it was often a case of the film-maker doggedly pursuing either a style that didn't fit the subject matter or questions that were not as interesting as others raised in the course of the film. Both cases highlight the documentary maker's need for flexibility. Whereas for narrative films sometimes a director's heroic stubbornness is what brings a creative vision to life, a la Apocalypse Now, in documentary it can be a pitfall. Sometimes, even if you've just, say, hypothetically spent months travelling across a country to film old monuments, you've got to take a step back and ask yourself if it's working quite as well as you had anticipated.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
I Think We're Alone Now
Remember Tiffany? The teen pop sensation from the 80s? No, me neither. I do remember her song "I think we're alone now", one of two hit singles she recorded in her fleeting moment of fame, but then I could as easily be remembering the original 60s version. Some though have never forgotten her. In I Think We're Alone Now, 25-year old Sean Donnelly's first feature, and my last film in this year's MIFF, we meet two people who have remained not just her fans, but her obsessive devotees.
Jeff, a 50 year old Californian man, has been so enthusiastic in his fandom he's been served with a restraining order for stalking the singer. Kelly, a Denver hermaphrodite who lives as a woman, is also deeply fixated, pasting the walls of her apartment with Tiffany's photo. Kelly dreams of one day being in a romantic relationship with Tiffany, Jeff believes he already is. This isn't the only thing Jeff is deluded about, he also believes in Satanic conspiracies and time travel and has spent thousands of dollars on equipment supposed to aid telepathy. Kelly comes across more as a lonely outsider who has locked onto the idea of Tiffany as some kind of saviour figure.
The film is shot in digital video, and seems to revel in its lowbrow feel. Credits are handwritten on note paper, as are titles, which are displayed by putting the paper into frame with the camera on autofocus. It's a little tacky, but suits the subject matter well enough. The oddball characters, as you might expect, provide endless material. At times it's hard to know what's sadder - their lonely obsessions, Tiffany's post stardom career or the fact that the audience were so prepared to laugh at what were clearly a couple of very disturbed people. Herein lies the big question that hangs over the film, which is a question of ethics. It's hard to avoid a certain amount of discomfort with a film based entirely around two people's mental problems.
Tough decision for a film maker. They are two undeniably interesting characters. The film offers a frank insight into obsession, which is valuable. Does that make it right to go ahead and paste their obsessions on the big screen? For the most part Donnelly handles it fairly well but there were still moments I was uncomfortable with. When the two go to Vegas for a Tiffany concert, for instance, despite having never met each other previously they inexplicably end up sharing a hotel room, in a sequence that smacks of having been set up expressly for the film. If so, then the film has started crossing the line from documentary toward reality TV.
Too much of the film rests on the character's twin obsessions, without exploring much beyond them. Sometimes there are other questions begging to be asked that go unaddressed. For instance, Jeff's telepathy gear and time travel books, on which he claims to have spent thousands of dollars over the years. Who does he buy this stuff from? Who's out there turning a profit from preying on the delusional? But no, that question is left as a passing oddity, and Jeff goes on trying to contact Tiffany on his mind device while the strangely incurious audience chuckle away at the crazy person.
I'm glad I saw the film, because delusion is fundamentally interesting, although I came out with a cynicism towards my fellow humans I haven't felt for a long time. Without talking to Donnelly himself I don't know what reaction he wanted from his audience. I hope he was aiming for more than laughter.
Jeff, a 50 year old Californian man, has been so enthusiastic in his fandom he's been served with a restraining order for stalking the singer. Kelly, a Denver hermaphrodite who lives as a woman, is also deeply fixated, pasting the walls of her apartment with Tiffany's photo. Kelly dreams of one day being in a romantic relationship with Tiffany, Jeff believes he already is. This isn't the only thing Jeff is deluded about, he also believes in Satanic conspiracies and time travel and has spent thousands of dollars on equipment supposed to aid telepathy. Kelly comes across more as a lonely outsider who has locked onto the idea of Tiffany as some kind of saviour figure.
The film is shot in digital video, and seems to revel in its lowbrow feel. Credits are handwritten on note paper, as are titles, which are displayed by putting the paper into frame with the camera on autofocus. It's a little tacky, but suits the subject matter well enough. The oddball characters, as you might expect, provide endless material. At times it's hard to know what's sadder - their lonely obsessions, Tiffany's post stardom career or the fact that the audience were so prepared to laugh at what were clearly a couple of very disturbed people. Herein lies the big question that hangs over the film, which is a question of ethics. It's hard to avoid a certain amount of discomfort with a film based entirely around two people's mental problems.
Tough decision for a film maker. They are two undeniably interesting characters. The film offers a frank insight into obsession, which is valuable. Does that make it right to go ahead and paste their obsessions on the big screen? For the most part Donnelly handles it fairly well but there were still moments I was uncomfortable with. When the two go to Vegas for a Tiffany concert, for instance, despite having never met each other previously they inexplicably end up sharing a hotel room, in a sequence that smacks of having been set up expressly for the film. If so, then the film has started crossing the line from documentary toward reality TV.
Too much of the film rests on the character's twin obsessions, without exploring much beyond them. Sometimes there are other questions begging to be asked that go unaddressed. For instance, Jeff's telepathy gear and time travel books, on which he claims to have spent thousands of dollars over the years. Who does he buy this stuff from? Who's out there turning a profit from preying on the delusional? But no, that question is left as a passing oddity, and Jeff goes on trying to contact Tiffany on his mind device while the strangely incurious audience chuckle away at the crazy person.
I'm glad I saw the film, because delusion is fundamentally interesting, although I came out with a cynicism towards my fellow humans I haven't felt for a long time. Without talking to Donnelly himself I don't know what reaction he wanted from his audience. I hope he was aiming for more than laughter.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Jesus Christ Saviour
Saturday night was time for an evening with Klaus Kinski. Jesus Christ Saviour was filmed during a tour of Kinski's one man performance about the life of Jesus in 1971. I missed whether the film was shot at a single performance, or over several troubled nights and then amalgamated, but it's a remarkable show.
The performance was to comprise Kinski on stage giving a monologue about Jesus. The audience start heckling him and he storms off. He gets persuaded back out, the show continues, and so does the heckling, to the extent that members of the audience get up on stage and try to take the microphone off him. Kinski's explosive reactions to his detractors are a show unto themselves.
Kinski's performance both mirrors and contradicts the subject matter of his monologue. People howl him down as he tries to talk about how people tried to silence Jesus. Then on the flipside he yells at people to shut up and listen to him denouncing authoritarianism. Having set himself up as a Jesus figure, he becomes at least half Pharisee himself.
At the same time as the performance reflects its own story, the film reflects the performance. A couple of people in the MIFF audience leave, unable to deal with it. Others get out mobile phones and twiddle on them during Kinski's longer rants. When the show ends, cancelled unfinished by the despondent Kinski, and the credits roll, most people leave. The audience leaves on screen, and the other audience leave the cinema, but the show's not over. Those who want to hear stay and after the theatre has all but emptied, after the credits, Klaus finally returns to do the show properly...
From a simple proposition - one man, one show, a camera that virtually never leaves the theatre - director Peter Geyer has created a surprisingly layered film, a study of the relationship between performer and audience and a fitting tribute to the elemental force that was Klaus Kinski.
The performance was to comprise Kinski on stage giving a monologue about Jesus. The audience start heckling him and he storms off. He gets persuaded back out, the show continues, and so does the heckling, to the extent that members of the audience get up on stage and try to take the microphone off him. Kinski's explosive reactions to his detractors are a show unto themselves.
Kinski's performance both mirrors and contradicts the subject matter of his monologue. People howl him down as he tries to talk about how people tried to silence Jesus. Then on the flipside he yells at people to shut up and listen to him denouncing authoritarianism. Having set himself up as a Jesus figure, he becomes at least half Pharisee himself.
At the same time as the performance reflects its own story, the film reflects the performance. A couple of people in the MIFF audience leave, unable to deal with it. Others get out mobile phones and twiddle on them during Kinski's longer rants. When the show ends, cancelled unfinished by the despondent Kinski, and the credits roll, most people leave. The audience leaves on screen, and the other audience leave the cinema, but the show's not over. Those who want to hear stay and after the theatre has all but emptied, after the credits, Klaus finally returns to do the show properly...
From a simple proposition - one man, one show, a camera that virtually never leaves the theatre - director Peter Geyer has created a surprisingly layered film, a study of the relationship between performer and audience and a fitting tribute to the elemental force that was Klaus Kinski.
Terror's Advocate
Saturday afternoon - L'Avocat de la Terreure (Terror's Advocate) - in which French film-maker Barbet Schroeder goes on the trail of Jacques Verges, lawyer for some of the world's most controversial figures, including dictators, revolutionaries and terrorists. Schroeder's back catalogue is pretty varied, everything from thrillers (Single White Female) to political documentaries (General Idi Amin Dada - A Self Portrait). Here, he opts for an interview-driven piece, half character portrait, half investigation.
Verges' world is a tangled one. He started his notorious career as a young idealist in Algeria, defending a pretty female freedom fighter who had been tortured by the French authorities. He later married her. While the marriage didn't last, his peculiar career choice did, bringing him into contact with everyone from the Palestinian Liberation Front to the Khmer Rouge to former Nazis. Schroeder sets out to untangle this web through interviews with Verges himself, those who have known him and a veritable army of journalists. Among the interviewees are several figures notorious in their own right, including high ranking Khmer Rouge leaders and even Carlos the Jackal, via phone from prison.
There are a lot of fascinating interviews, but the downside is there are a lot of interviews and, as most of them are in French, a lot of subtitles. Schroeder tries to add context by annotating the interviews with titles and sometimes pictures of people under discussion, superimposed on the background beside the interviewee. That probably works quite well in the original French but in a subtitled film it is confusing, because there need to be titles of the titles as well as the speech and it all becomes a bit crowded.
Crowded is probably not a bad word to describe the film as a whole. While I left with a good sense of Verges himself, it was virtually impossible to follow the timeline of his life or his web of connections. The film jumped from Algeria to Cambodia to Paris, one case to another, one time to another, with the connections sometimes left unsaid for so long I forgot what story I was watching. Sometimes interviews would do the same thing - such as a jolting shift from Verges at his desk, talking expansively while smoking a huge cigar, to Verges standing in an empty court room as if giving witness... but talking about an old relationship, not anything legal. While Terror's Advocate exposes a shadowy world rarely, if ever, seen on film, there are times when its knotted structure increases, rather than cuts through, the mystery surrounding this world. I don't know if I left enlightened or confused.
Verges' world is a tangled one. He started his notorious career as a young idealist in Algeria, defending a pretty female freedom fighter who had been tortured by the French authorities. He later married her. While the marriage didn't last, his peculiar career choice did, bringing him into contact with everyone from the Palestinian Liberation Front to the Khmer Rouge to former Nazis. Schroeder sets out to untangle this web through interviews with Verges himself, those who have known him and a veritable army of journalists. Among the interviewees are several figures notorious in their own right, including high ranking Khmer Rouge leaders and even Carlos the Jackal, via phone from prison.
There are a lot of fascinating interviews, but the downside is there are a lot of interviews and, as most of them are in French, a lot of subtitles. Schroeder tries to add context by annotating the interviews with titles and sometimes pictures of people under discussion, superimposed on the background beside the interviewee. That probably works quite well in the original French but in a subtitled film it is confusing, because there need to be titles of the titles as well as the speech and it all becomes a bit crowded.
Crowded is probably not a bad word to describe the film as a whole. While I left with a good sense of Verges himself, it was virtually impossible to follow the timeline of his life or his web of connections. The film jumped from Algeria to Cambodia to Paris, one case to another, one time to another, with the connections sometimes left unsaid for so long I forgot what story I was watching. Sometimes interviews would do the same thing - such as a jolting shift from Verges at his desk, talking expansively while smoking a huge cigar, to Verges standing in an empty court room as if giving witness... but talking about an old relationship, not anything legal. While Terror's Advocate exposes a shadowy world rarely, if ever, seen on film, there are times when its knotted structure increases, rather than cuts through, the mystery surrounding this world. I don't know if I left enlightened or confused.
My Winnipeg
I must admit to having become a bit cynical over the course of MIFF. Many of the docos I've seen at MIFF have employed some stylised or experimental elements, the kind of thing I get excited about, but when I actually see them they never seem to work as well as I want them to. The most effective films have seemed to be the ones that didn't bother and just used classic interview and observation. It's been a paradox.
Just when I was losing faith, along comes My Winnipeg. Wow. Canadian film-maker Guy Maddin throws all convention to the wind in this dream-like journey through his home town, its history, its myths and his own memories. It is like a beat poem on film, except instead of Kerouac's highways or Ginsberg's California, it unfolds in a snow smothered landscape of leafless trees and urban decay - Manitoba, the frigid heart of the North American continent and dead middle of nowhere. The film is shot almost entirely in black and white, giving it alternately a bleak, horror-movie feel or the tones of cheesy melodrama. He does everything from represent historical events with shadow puppets to recreate his own childhood with child actors playing opposite his actual mother. He appears in it himself, but always asleep on a train, while scenes from his city and his life roll past the window. It's completely undefinable and absolutely glorious.
So what is it that makes a convention-buster like this work, when other experiments have been leaving me a bit non-plussed? If I had to put a name on it, I'd say necessity. I get the feeling with some films that stylistic devices are added just because the film-maker thinks they'd be cool, whereas in fact you could tell the story just as easily without them. My Winnipeg couldn't be told any other way. How can you convey on camera all the accretions of emotion, memory and imagination attached to your hometown? Maddin employs whatever devices he can to portray his relationship to his town, the combined sense of comfort and oppression, love and hate, familiarity and bewilderment, recognisable to anyone who has lived in a place a long time. Every device he uses is serving that aesthetic. Without them it might have been a film about Winnipeg, but it wouldn't have been a film about Home.
Just when I was losing faith, along comes My Winnipeg. Wow. Canadian film-maker Guy Maddin throws all convention to the wind in this dream-like journey through his home town, its history, its myths and his own memories. It is like a beat poem on film, except instead of Kerouac's highways or Ginsberg's California, it unfolds in a snow smothered landscape of leafless trees and urban decay - Manitoba, the frigid heart of the North American continent and dead middle of nowhere. The film is shot almost entirely in black and white, giving it alternately a bleak, horror-movie feel or the tones of cheesy melodrama. He does everything from represent historical events with shadow puppets to recreate his own childhood with child actors playing opposite his actual mother. He appears in it himself, but always asleep on a train, while scenes from his city and his life roll past the window. It's completely undefinable and absolutely glorious.
So what is it that makes a convention-buster like this work, when other experiments have been leaving me a bit non-plussed? If I had to put a name on it, I'd say necessity. I get the feeling with some films that stylistic devices are added just because the film-maker thinks they'd be cool, whereas in fact you could tell the story just as easily without them. My Winnipeg couldn't be told any other way. How can you convey on camera all the accretions of emotion, memory and imagination attached to your hometown? Maddin employs whatever devices he can to portray his relationship to his town, the combined sense of comfort and oppression, love and hate, familiarity and bewilderment, recognisable to anyone who has lived in a place a long time. Every device he uses is serving that aesthetic. Without them it might have been a film about Winnipeg, but it wouldn't have been a film about Home.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Bastardy
Thursday afternoon was Bastardy, Amiel Courtin-Wilson's character portrait of Aboriginal actor and occassional cat-burglar Jack Charles. It's a very good film, and all the more exciting for being set in Melbourne and throwing new light on some familiar places, but in filmmaking terms it does raise a conundrum.
As with Blind Loves, from earlier this week, several scenes are clearly dramatisations, in which Jack acts out aspects of his own life. I'm in two minds about this as a documentary technique. On the one level, getting your subject to play themselves is as realistic as a dramatisation could be, and arguably no more a performance than someone describing something to the camera in an interview. Either way, it's their interpretation and depiction of their own behaviour.
It's not in terms of realism that I see a problem with it, but rather in terms of viewer reaction. Take for example the sequence where the audience first discover Jack is a burglar. The scene is a darkened house belonging to clearly wealthy people. You see his hands rifling through drawers and extracting valuables. It's a dramatic scene but the moment it starts, my mind took a step back from the film. I started thinking "oh this hasn't been shot for real, I wonder how they did it? ...is this a set or did they use a real house? ...did they direct him to open that drawer or did they just hide valuables in a room and get him to find them as he would if he was performing a robbery...?" and so forth.
At the same time as the dramatised sequence offers an insight into the character, it also creates a distance from the audience by making them think about the film-making process rather than the story. Both Blind Loves and Bastardy had this effect on me at some point. With Bastardy it was probably to a greater extent, because Blind Loves flagged that it would do this very early in the piece and had an overall feel of romantic fable, whereas Bastardy at times took a tone of gritty realism. Notably both these films are character portraits and it is perhaps in these types of pieces where you can blur the line between live action and drama most effectively, when it is personality rather than facts that you're trying to convey.
As with Blind Loves, from earlier this week, several scenes are clearly dramatisations, in which Jack acts out aspects of his own life. I'm in two minds about this as a documentary technique. On the one level, getting your subject to play themselves is as realistic as a dramatisation could be, and arguably no more a performance than someone describing something to the camera in an interview. Either way, it's their interpretation and depiction of their own behaviour.
It's not in terms of realism that I see a problem with it, but rather in terms of viewer reaction. Take for example the sequence where the audience first discover Jack is a burglar. The scene is a darkened house belonging to clearly wealthy people. You see his hands rifling through drawers and extracting valuables. It's a dramatic scene but the moment it starts, my mind took a step back from the film. I started thinking "oh this hasn't been shot for real, I wonder how they did it? ...is this a set or did they use a real house? ...did they direct him to open that drawer or did they just hide valuables in a room and get him to find them as he would if he was performing a robbery...?" and so forth.
At the same time as the dramatised sequence offers an insight into the character, it also creates a distance from the audience by making them think about the film-making process rather than the story. Both Blind Loves and Bastardy had this effect on me at some point. With Bastardy it was probably to a greater extent, because Blind Loves flagged that it would do this very early in the piece and had an overall feel of romantic fable, whereas Bastardy at times took a tone of gritty realism. Notably both these films are character portraits and it is perhaps in these types of pieces where you can blur the line between live action and drama most effectively, when it is personality rather than facts that you're trying to convey.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind
Occassionally I get excited about the idea of experimental films. Then I go see one and remember what "experimental" usually signifies. Yeesh.
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind is an attempt to tell the history of American activism using only plaques, memorials and gravestones. In itself, the idea of making a historical film in this way could probably work. The problem with Profit Motive Etc is not the experimental nature of its approach but rather the lack of coherent story underpinning it. It goes from monuments to Quaker pioneers and Native American chiefs to plaques commemorating 19th Century trade unionists, culminating eventually in a modern day rally opposing war in the Middle East. The motif of wind blowing in leaves is used repetitively throughout to symbolise an ongoing movement across time but this argument, which would be a long bow however you tried to draw it, is in no way backed up by the material shown. It's simply a lot of memorials dedicated to unrelated causes, or to unrecognised names without any context about what cause their owner stood for, if any.
It's a shame because I genuinely would have liked to see a historical film that told its story only using source materials, like memorials. Even without using voice-over or interviews, though, this film didn't manage this, providing comment at several points via titles. Not explanatory titles, which told you whose grave you were looking at, but annoying things like pasting the word "MASSACRED" over "DEFEATED" on a plaque describing a battle from the Indian wars. This kind of blatant editorialising defeated, or massacred if you will, the purpose of not doing a voice-over.
So another experiment falls on its face. At least it was a step up from the two shorts that preceded it, the unsubtly named Capitalism: Slavery and Capitalism: Child Labour, which together posed the question - how long can you add strobe effects and white noise to old photographs before making your audience want to tear their own eyes out? The answer is just over 17 minutes because I was literally seconds away when they finally, mercifully, ceased.
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind is an attempt to tell the history of American activism using only plaques, memorials and gravestones. In itself, the idea of making a historical film in this way could probably work. The problem with Profit Motive Etc is not the experimental nature of its approach but rather the lack of coherent story underpinning it. It goes from monuments to Quaker pioneers and Native American chiefs to plaques commemorating 19th Century trade unionists, culminating eventually in a modern day rally opposing war in the Middle East. The motif of wind blowing in leaves is used repetitively throughout to symbolise an ongoing movement across time but this argument, which would be a long bow however you tried to draw it, is in no way backed up by the material shown. It's simply a lot of memorials dedicated to unrelated causes, or to unrecognised names without any context about what cause their owner stood for, if any.
It's a shame because I genuinely would have liked to see a historical film that told its story only using source materials, like memorials. Even without using voice-over or interviews, though, this film didn't manage this, providing comment at several points via titles. Not explanatory titles, which told you whose grave you were looking at, but annoying things like pasting the word "MASSACRED" over "DEFEATED" on a plaque describing a battle from the Indian wars. This kind of blatant editorialising defeated, or massacred if you will, the purpose of not doing a voice-over.
So another experiment falls on its face. At least it was a step up from the two shorts that preceded it, the unsubtly named Capitalism: Slavery and Capitalism: Child Labour, which together posed the question - how long can you add strobe effects and white noise to old photographs before making your audience want to tear their own eyes out? The answer is just over 17 minutes because I was literally seconds away when they finally, mercifully, ceased.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Blind Loves
I think I have seen too many films in too short a space of time, or maybe the blog is acting like some sort of psychic echo chamber that is amplifying their effect on me. Last night I dreamt films. What's more, they were films starring the celebrities who appear in the Who weekly ads that precede every MIFF screening. I've still got so many films to go, this can only get worse.
Last night's film, Slovakian director Juraj Lehotsky's Blind Loves, sat somewhere on the misty border of documentary and narrative. It's about love in the life of the blind. There is a blind pianist and his wife, a blind gypsy and his star-crossed love affair, a blind mother and her sighted baby and a blind teenage girl searching for love on the internet. They are real people and presumably real stories, although they are been filmed in a narrative style with several scenes appearing recreated, and in one sequence departing into complete fantasy, when the imaginative pianist daydreams about life under the sea. It would be interesting to know how many of the scenes were scripted.
By inserting the fantasy sequence early, Lehotsky clearly flags that not everything is strictly for real. It is clear the focus is not on accuracy of events but on true depiction of character. Blind Loves made me realise how rarely blind people are actually shown on film, or when they are how they are so often defined by their accoutrements, like dark glasses and a cane. Blind eyes, especially, are rarely shown in close-up, as they are frequently in this film. Despite its liberal use of staging, it would be hard to find a more honest depiction of blindness than this beautiful and unique film.
Last night's film, Slovakian director Juraj Lehotsky's Blind Loves, sat somewhere on the misty border of documentary and narrative. It's about love in the life of the blind. There is a blind pianist and his wife, a blind gypsy and his star-crossed love affair, a blind mother and her sighted baby and a blind teenage girl searching for love on the internet. They are real people and presumably real stories, although they are been filmed in a narrative style with several scenes appearing recreated, and in one sequence departing into complete fantasy, when the imaginative pianist daydreams about life under the sea. It would be interesting to know how many of the scenes were scripted.
By inserting the fantasy sequence early, Lehotsky clearly flags that not everything is strictly for real. It is clear the focus is not on accuracy of events but on true depiction of character. Blind Loves made me realise how rarely blind people are actually shown on film, or when they are how they are so often defined by their accoutrements, like dark glasses and a cane. Blind eyes, especially, are rarely shown in close-up, as they are frequently in this film. Despite its liberal use of staging, it would be hard to find a more honest depiction of blindness than this beautiful and unique film.
Song Sung Blue
Tuesday afternoon-
Song Sung Blue
When I saw there was a film about a husband and wife Neil Diamond tribute band who had nearly but not quite become famous, I was expecting a quirky, possibly humorous character piece. Actually, this film was dark as hell. Shot in rough and ready, almost home video, style, it tracks the fall and fall of Mike and Claire Sandida, otherwise known as "Thunder and Lightning." "Thunder" was Claire, who sang backup and danced in sparkling costumes while Mike "Lightning" did the actual Neil Diamond impersonating. They were big in Milwaukee.
Over the course of the film, these two go through everything. Even before the film begins, Mike has already been a Vietnam vet and recovering addict / alcholic. Over the course of the film, Claire loses a leg, their career together nose dives, their family turns dysfunctional and Mike eventually dies. Not quite as quirky and funny as I'd been hoping for. Probably not what Mike and Claire were hoping for either.
Expectations aside, this is a film that, somewhat like its troubled stars, alternatively finds and loses its stride. One thing I appreciated was that it makes use of NOT showing things you expect to see, or turning away from high drama. For a long time, it avoids showing Claire after her accident. During roof-raiser family arguments the camera discretely faces away or looks around the room John Smith style. When Mike is dying, it won't show his face. This technique of avoidance is both respectful and effective in conveying emotional gravity. Other times though, like at the birth of Mike and Claire's grandchild, or when Claire is washing the stump of her leg in a sink, the presence of the camera feels voyeuristic. At times it is almost as if it is perversely doing what you don't expect it to.
Overall, it's interesting to watch the family's shifting fortunes, especially how every member of the family seems to respond directly to the success or failure of the Neil Diamond act, as if no one has a destiny of their own. I can find with these up close and personal films though that you end up watching every event in more detail than is necessarily needed to tell the story.
Song Sung Blue
When I saw there was a film about a husband and wife Neil Diamond tribute band who had nearly but not quite become famous, I was expecting a quirky, possibly humorous character piece. Actually, this film was dark as hell. Shot in rough and ready, almost home video, style, it tracks the fall and fall of Mike and Claire Sandida, otherwise known as "Thunder and Lightning." "Thunder" was Claire, who sang backup and danced in sparkling costumes while Mike "Lightning" did the actual Neil Diamond impersonating. They were big in Milwaukee.
Over the course of the film, these two go through everything. Even before the film begins, Mike has already been a Vietnam vet and recovering addict / alcholic. Over the course of the film, Claire loses a leg, their career together nose dives, their family turns dysfunctional and Mike eventually dies. Not quite as quirky and funny as I'd been hoping for. Probably not what Mike and Claire were hoping for either.
Expectations aside, this is a film that, somewhat like its troubled stars, alternatively finds and loses its stride. One thing I appreciated was that it makes use of NOT showing things you expect to see, or turning away from high drama. For a long time, it avoids showing Claire after her accident. During roof-raiser family arguments the camera discretely faces away or looks around the room John Smith style. When Mike is dying, it won't show his face. This technique of avoidance is both respectful and effective in conveying emotional gravity. Other times though, like at the birth of Mike and Claire's grandchild, or when Claire is washing the stump of her leg in a sink, the presence of the camera feels voyeuristic. At times it is almost as if it is perversely doing what you don't expect it to.
Overall, it's interesting to watch the family's shifting fortunes, especially how every member of the family seems to respond directly to the success or failure of the Neil Diamond act, as if no one has a destiny of their own. I can find with these up close and personal films though that you end up watching every event in more detail than is necessarily needed to tell the story.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Animation Shorts without Dogs
Apparently there are so many dogs in animation today they got their own program. No dogs in Monday night's animation program, although there was a giant hippopotamus, a raven voiced by Sir Ian McKellan, a polar bear and his penguin girlfriend, some undead elephants and a walrus. Well, The Walrus, as in John Lennon.
It's an irony about reviewing short film nights that the review can end up being inappropriately long as you try to give each film at least a cursory mention. So I won't go through them all. My favourite was probably Procrastination, a flow of animation passing from one medium to another, stop motion to drawn to computer generated, accompanied by a clever voice-over track. That and the John Lennon one, which used animation to illustrate a conversation that the film-maker had recorded as a teenager after sneaking into Lennon's hotel. It too used a flowing style, each image extending into and becoming the next.
It's a popular style these days, this sense of morph and motion, but for me it still depends on having a solid underlying story to work. Sense of Space for Urban People, for instance, did some stylish flowing animations but without any real narrative, became a bit meaningless. Conversely, Keith Reynolds Can't Make it Tonight used computer generated stick figures and succeeded because of a clever script.
The other trend I'm seeing in animation, and which was certainly felt in the night's program, is its use to address dark themes. Perhaps this is because dark stories become too lurid if told in flesh and blood. Or perhaps animators simply have dark imaginations. Or maybe the lack of dogs made things seem darker.
I found it interesting that the films I gravitated to were the ones that could be classed as animated documentaries. My hunger for reality has grown, it seems, since doing this course.
It's an irony about reviewing short film nights that the review can end up being inappropriately long as you try to give each film at least a cursory mention. So I won't go through them all. My favourite was probably Procrastination, a flow of animation passing from one medium to another, stop motion to drawn to computer generated, accompanied by a clever voice-over track. That and the John Lennon one, which used animation to illustrate a conversation that the film-maker had recorded as a teenager after sneaking into Lennon's hotel. It too used a flowing style, each image extending into and becoming the next.
It's a popular style these days, this sense of morph and motion, but for me it still depends on having a solid underlying story to work. Sense of Space for Urban People, for instance, did some stylish flowing animations but without any real narrative, became a bit meaningless. Conversely, Keith Reynolds Can't Make it Tonight used computer generated stick figures and succeeded because of a clever script.
The other trend I'm seeing in animation, and which was certainly felt in the night's program, is its use to address dark themes. Perhaps this is because dark stories become too lurid if told in flesh and blood. Or perhaps animators simply have dark imaginations. Or maybe the lack of dogs made things seem darker.
I found it interesting that the films I gravitated to were the ones that could be classed as animated documentaries. My hunger for reality has grown, it seems, since doing this course.
Be Like Others
Monday afternoon saw the totally fascinating and somewhat heartbreaking Be Like Others, about a busy gender reassigment clinic in Teheran. Iran is a land of contradictions. Homosexuality is illegal, cross-dressing is illegal, those who fail to adhere to rigid gender roles are subject to rank discrimination, but sex change is legal and thriving. (Apparently the clinic featuring in Be Like Others performs more reassignments in a year than the whole of Europe.) That's the fascinating part. The heartbreaking part is the lives of those who seek sex changes, both the situation that drives them sometimes reluctantly to make the change in an attempt to fit in with a strictly sex-typed society, and the ramifications the change can have on their lives.
This well made and remarkably candid film, the work of Iranian-American film-maker Tanaz Eshaghian, has many highlights, including a documentary within a documentary, when her film crew record another crew making a documentary for Iranian state-run media. My only quibble with it is that it focuses on male to female sex changes, with only a slight nod to the reverse transition.
It's a powerful story, and from those films I've seen made in Iran, it seems to be the kind of country that generates powerful stories. The basis of story is said to be establishing character and putting it to the test. In a country like Iran, where a draconian social order clashes with both the ancient culture and the people's drive to modernise, human character as a whole is put to the test. You see familiar character-types subjected to extreme circumstances. It's like a recipe for a compelling tale.
This well made and remarkably candid film, the work of Iranian-American film-maker Tanaz Eshaghian, has many highlights, including a documentary within a documentary, when her film crew record another crew making a documentary for Iranian state-run media. My only quibble with it is that it focuses on male to female sex changes, with only a slight nod to the reverse transition.
It's a powerful story, and from those films I've seen made in Iran, it seems to be the kind of country that generates powerful stories. The basis of story is said to be establishing character and putting it to the test. In a country like Iran, where a draconian social order clashes with both the ancient culture and the people's drive to modernise, human character as a whole is put to the test. You see familiar character-types subjected to extreme circumstances. It's like a recipe for a compelling tale.
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